Unconventional Approaches to Modern Chess Volume 1 First edition 2019 by Thinkers Publishing Copyright © 2019 Alexander Ipatov All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a re- trieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the publisher. All sales or enquiries should be directed to Thinkers Publishing, 9850 Landegem, Belgium. Email: [email protected] Website: www.thinkerspublishing.com Managing Editor: Romain Edouard Assistant Editor: Daniël Vanheirzeele Software: Hub van de Laar Cover Design: Iwan Kerkhof Graphic Artist: Philippe Tonnard Back cover photo: Nigarhan Gurpinar Production: BESTinGraphics ISBN: 9789492510488 D/2019/13730/1 Unconventional Approaches to Modern Chess Volume 1 Alexander Ipatov Thinkers Publishing 2019 Key to Symbols ! a good move ⩲ White stands slightly better ? a weak move ⩱ Black stands slightly better !! an excellent move ± White has a serious advantage ?? a blunder ∓ Black has a serious advantage !? an interesting move +- White has a decisive advantage ?! a dubious move -+ Black has a decisive advantage □ only move → with an attack N novelty ↑ with an initiative ⟳ lead in development ⇆ with counterplay ⨀ zugzwang ∆ with the idea of = equality ⌓ better is ∞ unclear position ≤ worse is © with compensation for the + check sacrificed material # mate Table of Contents Key to Symbols ..................................................................................................... 4 Preface ................................................................................................................. 7 PART I – Sidelines In Mainstream Openings....................... 11 Chapter 1 – Early Deviations in the Ruy Lopez..................................................... 13 Chapter 2 – Later Deviations in the Ruy Lopez..................................................... 47 Chapter 3 – Scotch Game.................................................................................. 109 Chapter 4 – Caro-Kann Defense ........................................................................ 131 Chapter 5 – Rauzer Variation ............................................................................ 153 Chapter 6 – Philidor Defense............................................................................. 163 Chapter 7 – Nimzo-Indian Defense.................................................................... 177 PART II – Systems.......................................................................... 195 Chapter 8 – Double Fianchetto ......................................................................... 197 Chapter 9 – 1.d4 d6 .......................................................................................... 237 Chapter 10 – Malakhov System......................................................................... 273 PART III – Showing Ambitions ................................................ 297 PART IV – Early Surprises........................................................... 325 Final Thoughts .................................................................................................. 359 To my family Preface “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” Mark Twain Thanks to the democratization of knowledge following technological progress, nowadays everyone knows chess openings. It is getting increasingly harder to ob- tain an opening advantage against a well-prepared opponent, even against a non- professional player who knows his lines well. Some players are stubborn and try to be better prepared than the competition by analyzing deeper (up to move 30 or even further), using stronger engines (e.g. ChessBase Cloud), getting access to cor- respondence and engine databases or by simply memorizing lines from fashionable openings books. In my opinion, for the most part it all comes to down to pure mem- orization and, hence, an abundance of deadly drawish positions or repetitions right out of the opening if both players are up to the task. Super-tournaments are noto- rious for this. Additionally, the game loses its creative aspect and becomes less fun. I believe that devoting most of the training time to studying mainstream theory is wrong. First, chess is not fun anymore. How many moves does one have to play (memorize) to be finally on his own? Second, opportunity cost – what other chess knowledge could you have acquired in that time? Third, knowledge doesn’t stay the same – if you want to be ahead of the curve in opening preparation, you have to be constantly monitoring new games on a daily basis, updating your software and hardware to gain stronger engines, and reading all relevant published literature. But the competition is doing exactly the same! It reminds me of numerous visits to the old dining hall at my university. There were two tables with food. One table had ingredients to make a burger. The other table had healthier food. Whenever I en- tered the dining hall for lunch, there was one big line and always to that same table. The latter one with healthy food, you might think? No. People were lining up to get burgers whereas the healthy table had no line at all! Isn’t it the same with opening preparation, where there is one clear unhealthy trend? I keep wondering why the majority of players, from total beginners to strong grandmasters, fall into this trap. Learning main lines and staying up to date takes an enormous amount of time, since nearly everyone is doing the very same thing. It is like a rat race, where you always have to run. Couldn’t that time be used more wisely by spending it on enhancing one’s general chess understanding -- studying classics, endgames, typical pawn structures and plans, and solving tactics? Do not get me wrong. I do not say that one doesn’t have to know openings at all. Of course not. The message that I’m trying to convey is that one needs to be smarter and avoid following the trend of memorizing fashionable lines until move 30 or so. As a chess professional, I know a number of accomplished players whose strength significantly drops once they are out of book and have to start thinking on their own early on. Much the same can be said about amateur players – they play flawlessly when they follow their preparation, but once they are on their own won- ders start to happen. This brings me to an important distinction that I want to draw between “in theory” and “in practice”. What I suggest is to dedicate most of the training time to improving general knowledge as discussed above, and less to studying main lines. As far as openings are concerned, there is a plethora of less studied or even totally neglected lines that can be studied at home and successfully implemented over the board. However, it is important to have several such lines, otherwise it will become easy to prepare against you. The whole point is to be predictably unpredictable. While preparing against you, the majority of players will simply turn on the engine, smile (“Eh, it is +0.7, I am much better here!”) and stop preparing. Some of them will follow the first line for a few more moves and then stop. And this is exactly what we want! Also, rare lines imply less theory, which subsequently means that one doesn’t have to memorize as much as in the mainstream theory. For example, if your opponent plays fast, you can anticipate that he has likely prepared the first or second line shown by the engine. So if you understand that position well enough, you can play some other move not shown by the computer! Your opponent, likely out of book and without deep knowledge of that line, will burn some time on the clock and start making inferior decisions later on. However, sometimes, you might get unlucky – your opponent will play well no matter how hard you try to get him out of theory. This is the risk that I am willing to take in my games. Are you? If so, keep reading. This book is about the practical approach to the game of chess. It shaped me as a player and now I would like to share my philosophy with you. My objective is to combat several generally accepted misconceptions, such as a) only studying open- ing theory will make you a better player, b) one should always follow the first or second line shown by Komodo or Stockfish, and finally, c) that “in theory” is equiv- alent to “over the board”. The last fallacy is especially dangerous because it implies that players will keep on making the best moves over the board, and therefore side- lines should never be played as the opponent will always find a way to retain and convert the advantage. That is in theory. In practice, however, many players will feel like fish out of water once they end up in a position that is objectively better for them but one that they have never analyzed. Overall, based on my experience as a chess professional, I strongly believe that the above-mentioned fallacies do not hold true empirically. Most of the material in this book is based on my own offbeat opening repertoire from Black's perspective. The book is divided into four parts. Part I covers sidelines in the mainstream openings where I take a major opening and analyze one or sev- eral sidelines. This is the most theoretical part of the book, where I share a signifi- cant amount of original thoughts and analyses that constitute my opening reper- toire. Part II discusses the concept that I refer to as systems. It still involves theory, but less so in comparison to Part